The Dirty Laundry Business

For their forthcoming book Screencraft: Screenwriting, Declan McGrath and Felim McDermott spent a couple of years tracking down the writers behind great films from Bicycle Thieves to Chinatown. Kieran Hayes listens to their tales of adventure in what Paul Schrader describes as The Dirty Laundry Business. [Extract]

Declan McGrath and Felim McDermott are sitting in the LA home of Robert Towne, breathing in cigar smoke and listening to an old Irish ballad called Feilm Brady, the Bard of Armagh. The author of Chinatown has insisted on digging up an old tape of the song after Felim introduced himself. He sucks on his cigar while commenting appreciatively on the line "Merry hearted boys make the best of old men". It was an unforgettable moment, says Felim, and one that becomes the touchstone for a book on that uniquely modern art form: screenwriting.

The ballad is a record of a particular culture, time and place, a story sung by flickering firelight. The flickering light of global cinema is where we tell our stories now, and screenwriters are contemporary bards, practitioners of the ancient art and tradition of storytelling. So Felim and Declan came to believe in the course of almost two years of research, and interviews with thirteen of the world's most gifted and celebrated writers for the screen. While a whole new lexicon has grown up around the craft - point of no return, exit point, three-act structure - it starts with the ancient human need and occupation of storytelling. "We set out to give these artists an open platform, not to write a technical book about screenwriting," says Felim. The interviews, and the scrapbook of images and script transcripts, gives an insight into the creative process of artists who have produced the world's finest cinematic art, and some its most compelling stories.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 92